Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

Carpe Fulgur - the tiny translation/localisation team that brought the West Recettear, Chantelise and Fortune Summoners - is doing just fine, as reported on the company's blog. They may have been outwardly fairly quiet since the release of Fortune Summoners, but they've been beavering away at their biggest localisation job yet: XSEED's Trails in the Sky. To clarify: they're doing the second chapter of the celebrated JRPG series, with the first heading to Western PCs sometime this Winter, without their involvement.

Other tasty TitS-bits from the post include the fact that Recettear has sold a whopping 300,000 copies to date, which along with the "successful" Chantelise and Fortune Summoners means that "Carpe Fulgur has never been healthier" - something that should ease the minds of fans worried that the team may have fallen off the map.

As for the just revealed Trails in the Sky: SC, Carpe Fulgur's Andrew Dice is of the opinion that it is "not just our largest localization to date, but is without hyperbole one of the largest projects in the history of the industry." Blimey. Carpe Fulgur are handling the localisation of Trails SC , while FC "was done some years ago and nearly drove poor Jessica Chavez of XSEED mad in the attempt". That's coming to PC this Winter, while Carpe Fulgur's herculean effort is arriving next year. There's also a third chapter awaiting translation - but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

My JRPG knowledge has seriously lapsed since the late 90s, but I've heard good things about Trails in the Sky. As with the Ys games, Trails will be heading to Steam. Read Andrew Dice's blog post for more info, or stick around for a ridiculously brief announcement trailer.

Don't forget to check back for a new Community Choice vote every 8 hours and new Flash sales throughout the day! You can also grab the Steam mobile app to make sure you never miss any great deals while you're on the go!

Complete information on all the savings, Flash Sales, Community Choice Votes and more may be found on www.steampowered.com.

Just a quick one, as I’m supposed to be in the middle of cooking a curry and if my girlfriend catches me posting instead of chopping onions she’ll… WhatwasthatohgodI’mgonnadie.

Okay. Okay. It was only a passing seagull. Got to be speedy here. Side-scrolling RPG Fortune Summoners, the next translated Japanese indie game from Carpe Fulgur, now has an English-language demo. That’s here, at a svelte cost of 66MB. And its release date and price are newly confirmed as January 17th, 2012 and 25 USD/20 EUR/£16. Right, I need to slice some mushrooms before I get sliced up myself. Have fun!

Recettear merchants Carpe Fulgur recently released their second translated Japanese indie title, Chantelise, to the English-speaking world. The all-action dungeon-runner has been a little more divisive than its shopkeeping-centric predecessor, but it’s definitely picked up fans. Seems like a good time to chat to Carpe Fulgur’s Andrew Dice about the reception to the game, the debate over its difficulty, the argument around whether old Japanese gaming traditions such as painful low-health noises and repetition should be revisited, what the Japanese indie scene is like compared to its mainstream, and what to expect from project number 3, Fortune Summoners…>(more…)

Chantelise is a whimsical Action-RPG brought to you from the creators of the renowned Recettear ~ An Item Shop's Tale. Search for treasures, fight challenging bosses, and delve deep into dungeons for loot and hours after hours of gameplay. There is fishing! Yes - fishing with collectible fish!

Five years ago, a witch's curse beneath the red moon turned Chante into a fairy. Now she and her sister Elise search for a way to transform her back into a human, and in their travels they come across a particular town, which is home to a number of nearby ruins, as well as a peculiar shopkeeper named Aira, and a strange, mercurial fortune-teller who calls herself Elma. Could this place hold the key to returning Chante to normal? Or will it lead to more answers than our two sisters ever wanted to know?...

I’ve spent a few hours nuzzling up to Chantelise, the next Westernised translation/do-over of a Japanese indie title from noble Recettear chaps Carpe Fulgur. Because I appear to be pretty terrible at the game, a full Wot I Think is probably some days off. Meantime though, here’s some early impressions ahead of the release on Friday.>

It strongly evokes Recettear while being absolutely nothing like it. Obviously much of that has to do with the love it/hate it/be a grown up and not be too fussed either way art style, but even beyond that a confluence of tone (via Carpe Fulgur’s extensive and breezily charismatic rewrite of the dialogue), references (many items bear similar if not the same names) and interface design paints this as a clear companion piece.(more…)

All of a sudden, we’re just days away from the next release from the merchants of Recettear. Chantelise: A Tale Of Two Sisters is, as is Carpe Fulgur’s M.O., a diligently-translated Western do-over of a Japanese indie title – in this case a dungeon crawler. Which means ACTION rather than COMMERCE.

Chantelise will finally be released later this week- the 29th, specifically. You can warm yourself up with a demo right now, however.(more…)